


Homecoming

by Cyme



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: ADWD spoilers, Canon Compliant, Dark, Gen, Post - A Dance With Dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyme/pseuds/Cyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Arya Stark returns to Westeros.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> First fan fic in years! To any who deign to read and comment, be kind! To all the rest, may GRRM publish something soon!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything (really, not even a car).

_Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei._

She whispered the prayer in the tilting dark until the great cog’s hull scraped against the shore like tooth on bone. There were shouts and thumps from the deck above, but down in the hold, the night wolf crouched in the darkness, her chapped lips moving silently as she prayed.

_Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei._

She would follow their winding scents over the frost-scourged lands of Westeros, through the cold forests and across the icy streams. She would taste them on her tongue and then rip their throats out in the dark of the Longest Night. See their red lifeblood spatter the white snow in beat to failing hearts.

The ship’s crew moved about noisily above, as if their clatter would make her forget herself; they had hoped for it during the entirety of their journey, she knew – hoped to forget about the creature that hunched in a dark corner of the hold. The ship’s captain had not wanted her, but it took only a few persuasive words, a look, to make her case. One did not deny the Girl Without a Face.

She picked the crew mates carefully. One had a mother in Lys, still alive, and although he plundered and killed and raped with the rest of them, he still thought about his mother, still sent her coin and sweet words to remember him.

She found him on the stairs to the hold, a lantern swaying softly overhead. It was her first new face since Braavos and the flickering light made it easier. The Girl Without a Face was his mother, lonely and sick, and the crewman wept bitterly to see her. He fed her every night for a week. Good fodder, stew and hard biscuits, water and black tar rum that left the Girl Without a Face soaring and dizzy. He asked her for stories of his childhood until she grew weary. She felt his body slip overboard in the dark of night. She was blind again and he did not make a sound.

_Who are you? No one._

She found the cook to be of more use to her. He baked her pasties and fed her good red wine, watered down the way his young Braavosi daughter liked it. He did not speak when he fed her, only stared in wonder with heartbreak written in his eyes. The ship’s crew thought him mad, for the cook began railing a particularly violent storm. His daughter was suddenly gone, washed overboard in the night. The cook should have been washed overboard with her, but the Girl Without a Face appreciated his food. The cook stayed, and his tears lent a salty flavor to their fare.

_Who are you? No one._

The crew began to talk of ghosts. They called the ship haunted. The captain screamed at them, called them women and cowards and rats. The black tar rum ran out, and the Girl Without a Face walked the deck as herself. The crewmen cried, they whimpered. She opened the bellies of two who thought to wrap her in canvas and toss her overboard. She ate their hearts in front of the other men, bite by dripping bite, until the night wolf inside her was satisfied. 

They would not come into the hold after that. They shuttered the entrance and locked her in with iron chains. She snapped at their shadows and curled up in hunger atop a pile of rank rope. In sleep, the night wolf hunted with her cousins and feasted beneath the silent pines, but in the dark of the hold, the Girl Without a Face grew gaunt and weak. She moaned in time to the ship’s awful swaying, moaned her prayer to the dark, blind again. Thrice blind, like a curse.

_Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Raff the Sweetling. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei_

They tried to starve her, make her forget herself, but the Girl Without a Face could wait. She did not need their kindness. She could smell their fear and their treachery; it was a scent she knew well, better than her own name, better than the prayer. All men smelled the same. Of iron and loss and death.

_Who are you? No one._


End file.
